cook global | eat local

In theory, any food made with oil can be served for Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of light, but we’ve always found it an excellent reason to make (and eat) the kinds of fried delicacies we often don’t the rest of the year. And since lingering over a pan of hot oil isn’t exactly our… Continue reading Hanukkah

Although we are always a little sad after daylight savings time, as the skies darken earlier and earlier each evening, there’s some solace in knowing that we’re also embarking on the season of festivals of light. Although Hanukkah and Christmas are the two best known and most widely celebrated of these in the U.S., Diwali… Continue reading Diwali | November 7

When we crafted our mission for the Festive Food Project–to bring amazing, celebratory dishes to a larger audience–we knew we’d be diving deep into familiar holidays as well as exploring more far-flung traditions that were new to us. What we didn’t expect was the new things we’d learn about the holidays we thought we knew:… Continue reading Oktoberfest

On Labor Day weekend, Brooklyn hosts the annual West Indian Day Parade, the largest street party of the year and the most important celebration of the city’s Caribbean community. While the parade always gets top billing and draws the largest crowds, J’ouvert, the festival that takes place in the wee hours of Labor Day morning,… Continue reading J’Ouvert

Making and eating holiday foods from around the world is like a magic carpet ride, transporting us across space and time. Ferragosto traces its roots back to 18 BC, when the Emperor Augustus-—in typically Roman fashion—consolidated Italy’s summertime harvest festivals under his own name as the “Feriae Augusti.” Today, the holiday honors both its ancient… Continue reading Ferragosto | August 15

We’ll take any opportunity to French-ify our lives and Bastille Day is the perfect occasion to do so. Lucky for us, Brooklyn hosts a massive Bastille Day fête every July where a portion of Smith Street, one of the local thoroughfares, is transformed into a giant sand Pétanque court, where teams compete all day while… Continue reading Bastille Day | July 14

Can you believe we’ve only recently learned about a holiday that’s been around for 150 years? In some ways that makes perfect sense: Juneteenth is about as local a holiday as you can imagine, celebrating not the Emancipation Proclamation made by Lincoln in 1863, but the date when news of it reached Texas–almost two years… Continue reading Juneteenth | June 19